Court call for HS2 data to be released

AN HS2 campaigner is to apply for a court ruling demanding that withheld data is made public today.

Information on the number of passengers which will use each train has not been released by the Department for Transport, which says the data is commercially sensitive.

A request to make it public has been submitted under the Environmental Information Regulations by Northamptonshire farmer Andrew Green, whose land will be cut in half by the planned route of the controversial new railway line.

Mr Green will ask a judge at an Information Tribunal to overrule the decision not to release the information.

He said: "Successive Transport Secretaries have justified HS2 with the claim that it is needed, not for speed but for capacity. They claim that the existing rail system is close to being full.

"But in an earlier judicial review in a separate case, the government was forced to reveal that long distance trains using Euston, even at peak times, were only half full with a substantial over supply of first class seats."

Joe Rukin, of the campaign group StopHS2, said: "While the government hide behind ‘commercial confidentiality’, there is only one real reason why they don’t want to publish the passenger numbers, because they will undermine the case for HS2, show it isn’t needed, and show that the real capacity crunch is not where HS2 is going."